Poison Ivy
by Valiant Flower
Summary: Edmund gets poison ivy and is home alone. What does he do? -Reposted!-


**Poison Ivy**

Greetings, peoples! This was the product of _me_ having (what I thought was) poison ivy. I'm actually just allergic to something in my PJs and bed, so I get hives every night. =P Last night was really bad.

Anyway, no, I don't own the Pevensies, or England, or poison ivy, but I shall play with them and wash my hands when I'm done. Then, if I'm in a good mood, I might put them back for other people!

BTW, Ed's about eleven in this story. It's after Narnia. And I'm not sure if poison ivy is in England, but…now it is!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~*~

"…ten, nine, eight, seven…" Peter counted, getting faster with excitement.

Edmund looked around frantically. _Where to hide, where to hide, __**there**__ to hide!_

He dove into the bushes just as Peter hit three.

Wiping leaves and dirt out of his hair (he didn't care if it was there or not, but Susan would be mad), he peered out from behind the twigs and branches. Peter had just found Susan, who just stood behind a tree.

From where he was, Ed could see Lucy curled into a ball under the back steps.

Unfortunately, Peter did too, and ran over to her. She started grinning and wriggled out, scaring Peter, who was thought she was in the trees.

They then got into a mock argument about whether or not that should count, because Peter didn't actually find her.

"But you got out!"

"So? I should still be able to hide again, oh High King!"

"But I know where you were!"

"….so?"

"C'mon, you can help me find Ed."

Lucy had seen him make his "graceful" flying leap into the bushes, and purposefully searched across the yard.

Suddenly, Edmund had the sudden urge to….

_No! No, no, no, no, no,no,nononono!_

_ACH-OO!_

Peter's head whipped around, and the sight he saw was his little brother sprawled in the bush, rubbing his nose and muttering to himself.

"There you are, Ed!"

"Here I am, Pete!" he said back, grinning.

Susan came running over.

"Ed! Get out of there, you'll get poison ivy or something!"

He grumbled something that sounded like an objection, but came out of the bushes anyway.

"So who's it now?"

"Ed is," Peter said, grinning.

"No I'm not! Susan should be it, because she was found first!"

Lucy stopped what could have become a large argument (these _were_ Peter and Edmund Pevensie, remember) by yelling, "I'll be it!"

Edmund stared at her, "But Lucy, are you sure?"

"Yes. Now go hide if you want to be found last again!"

----------------------------

That evening at supper, Peter was just in the middle of explaining in-depth the hide and seek game they had played, and he had just gotten to the part, "…then Susan told him to get out because of _poison ivy_, for goodness sake…"

When Edmund felt his arm getting itchy. He scratched it, and ignored it.

Until a minute later, when it came back worse.

_No. I _do not_ have whatever- it-was-that-Susan-said. No, no, no, no. No. Peter won't hear about it, at any rate._

He started to scratch his arm unconsciously, and continued eating.

But then Lucy said, "Edmund? Are you alright? What's wrong with your arm?"

He whipped his hand away from his arm and said, "Nothing. Why do you ask?"

She looked incredulously at his arm, then back at him, "Ed! Honestly!"

"I…probably just ate something strange."

"We've had this the last three nights, Ed. Try again," Peter said, crossing his arms.

_So much for not letting him know…_

"Really Pete! I don't know _what_ started it!" he pleaded again.

"Roll up your sleeve, Edmund, and let me see," his mother said firmly, and he knew it was over.

Reluctantly, (squeezing his eyes shut), he rolled up the sleeve.

_Please don't let it be there, please don't let it show…_

Once the sleeve got to his elbow he stopped and opened his eyes.

_NO!_

There were the bumps, and the redness, plain as day.

"By the Lion, Ed!" Peter burst out, leaning forward to get a better view.

"Edmund! Why didn't you tell us earlier?!" Lucy cried.

"Come on. We're going to patch that up right now!" his mother had said, and marched him off down the hall.

--------------------------------------------

And that was how he had ended up sitting here in the living room, all alone. He had nothing to do, because everyone was out. Lucy was playing with her friend Emily, Peter was running to the store for Mum, but he would be back soon. (That's what he had said thirty minutes ago.) Susan was with her friends, doing…girlish things probably. He didn't know what they were, but he wasn't sure he _wanted_ to know, either.

So there he sat, tapping a spoon on his hand, trying to jolt his arm enough to make the itch go away.

But when he looked at said hand after fifteen minutes, he found a large bruise forming, and quickly stopped.

_Let's go look for a book._

He got up and marched to Peter's room in search of the perfect book to read.

_Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, The Pickwick Papers…Does he even _have_ anything that isn't _Dickens_?!_

He had almost settled for A Tale of Two Cities; when he opened it up. He read a bit:

_"... chase flying from hunters, he was still in his metempsychosis no other than the same Monseigneur, the preparation of whose __**chocolate**__ for whose lips had once occupied three strong men besides the cook in question. ..."_

"What?!" he asked himself incredulously.

The book slammed shut, and was put back on the shelf.

He marched to Lucy's room.

Looking at the bookshelf there, he realized that, since she was only ten, she had a limited supply of books that had any interest. This was a fact that caused her much irritation, and she usually went to Susan's room in search of good stories.

He marched to Susan's room.

On her bookshelf, there was only one genre: magazine. But because his arm was acting up again, he grabbed on, and started hitting the offending limb with said magazine.

Since Susan had nothing of interest, he went to his father's study.

Upon realizing that because it was, in fact, a study, it really didn't have any books that an eleven year old boy would want to read, he went to the last available room: his own.

Now, there _had_ been a reason that he didn't go to his room in the first place, and that was that he couldn't find much of anything.

He had been meaning to clean up, it wasn't right for a king of Narnia to have a messy room, but this _was _England, not Narnia.

So he looked inside, saw the mess, and resolved to clean it all up before Peter got home.

_Slam!_

"Ed? I'm home!"

_So much for that._

After taking a quick inventory, he decided to start with a corner.

After cleaning up that cleanest corner there and not finding anything to read, he went to the next.

No book was found.

He did the other two with no such luck, and then got desperate and went to Peter.

"Do you happen to have a book that _isn't_ Charles Dickens that I can read?"

"No, sorry," Peter said, shaking his head.

But then Lucy came home, and he didn't need a book anymore.

They both played chess until dinner time, when Susan reappeared.

About an hour later, Edmund was happily laying on his newly-cleaned bed, thinking about all the Narnians that he had become friends with.

Susan yelled to him from her room, "Ed? Do you have any idea where my magazine is?"

Now, if you are a child with a messy room, you probably have some sort of order to it: all clothes go in that corner, toys are in that one, and everything else goes into that cabinet.

So when Ed realized that the magazine in question was lurking around his room somewhere, he sighed and went digging through the newly-cleaned room, trying to find, in the new order, where Susan's book was.

The moral of the story is: If you have to clean up your room on a day when you have poison ivy and are alone without a Lucy to play chess with, make sure to remember where everything is.

Or, listen to Susan when she tells you to get out of the bushes, and don't get poison ivy in the first place.

_____________________________________

So, what did you think?????

I don't own any of Dickens' works, and I only put the 'Tale of Two Cities' quote in to confuse you, me, and Ed! It just sounded really professional, like something Peter would have, and if anyone knows what metempsychosis means, let me know, because I have no idea!

Please review! *pushes cookies to people*


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